The pop culture gurus at Entertainment Weekly snagged an interview recently that might be of interest to fans of HBOWatch. On the site’s “Inside TV” blog Ray Rahman put together a series of questions for Shane Smith. He is, of course, a co-founder of VICE Media and the host of the HBO series VICE.
VICE came off a successful premiere season with HBO and HBOWatch chronicled it every step of the way. It has already been announced here and elsewhere that Season Two of the series was a go. What is planned for the sophomore season is the focus of the interview at EW. The link above provides the interview in its entirety but here are a few snippets that we thought you’d like.
EW: What other places are on your itinerary for the new season?
SMITH: We have two big pieces planned in countries that are really hard to get into, and even harder to shoot in: Iran and Saudi Arabia. So we’re gearing up for those.
We’ll be heading to Iran in this same trip. Iran right now is the Holy Grail for reporters — it’s even harder to get into for Western reporters than North Korea — and Saudi is a big deal for us as well. So we have big plans for both those shoots, and hopefully they come off. That’s my wish-list right now.
EW: Where else?
SMITH: Well, we’re just shooting like crazy. We have a bunch of our hosts, too, that we’re adding to our teams on the road, so we can shoot more segments. We’re shooting in Russia right now…we’re in Somalia right now; we’re shooting the Al-Qaeda drug-running through Mali and North Africa.
And right now, we’re shooting in Cuba and in South America. We’re doing some crazy shit in Panama, too. I can’t say much, but it’s basically legal money laundering and illegal weapons tied together.
EW: Last year, you guys raised a lot of eyebrows by sending Dennis Rodman to hang out with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Are there any celebrities planned to show up in this season?
EW: Last year, you guys raised a lot of eyebrows by sending Dennis Rodman to hang out with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Are there any celebrities planned to show up in this season?
SMITH: We do have a few well-known faces. I can’t really talk about it because I don’t want to screw up their shoots since they haven’t done them yet. But yeah, we’ve got well-known names going to some pretty crazy places. We’ll see what happens.
And we will have to wait to see what happens as well. But, as you can see VICE is all over the world right now. It is in the back and war-torn streets, in the heart of the jungles, and at the seats of power. And they are getting the types of stories that you just can’t believe exist. It also seems that they are dragging celebrities into the mix. I don’t know how much I care for that thought; I like the VICE team just the way it is.
You can also imagine that it will take quite a bit of time to get the intense footage they need and to edit it all down into the jolting segments that we see. We will have to be patient I’m afraid before we see HBO’s VICE: Season Two. HBOWatch will keep you informed.
Don’t let these few quotes suffice go ahead and seek out the entire interview and join me in anticipation for more VICE. Thanks, Entertainment Weekly!
